South Park: The Fractured But Whole Rated in Australia Without Incident

Uncut, uncensored, and unlike South Park: The Stick of Truth.

By Luke Reilly

If South Park: The Stick of Truth’s classification hassles in Australia back in 2013 had you concerned for the fate of the sequel within these shores, relax; Ubisoft has today confirmed South Park: The Fractured But Whole has been rated R18+ and will be released in Australia “completely uncut and uncensored.”

The game, and its associated rating advice, is yet to appear in the Australian Classification Board’s database.

South Park: The Stick of Truth encountered problems in Australia in 2013 when it was refused classification twice. A third submission from Ubisoft, which famously removed the problem sequence and replaced it with a still image of a crying koala, was eventually rated R18+ on November 21 with the consumer advice “High impact crude humour, sex scenes and references to sexual violence.”

The Stick of Truth’s pain down under was caused by an anal probe sequence involving minors. The Australian Classification Board acknowledged the satirical nature of the content but explained that visually depicted, implied sexual violence is not permitted within the R18+ guidelines for games and thus it was incapable of accommodating the game within the R18+ classification.

The probe sequence was ultimately removed in the console versions of the game in Europe also, though not at the request of Europe’s video games ratings board, PEGI (like the Australian Classification Board, PEGI is not empowered to censor games, it just rates them as provided). PEGI rated the game 18 with the sequences intact, and rated it 18 again with the sequences removed. According to Ubisoft the cuts were a “market decision made by Ubisoft EMEA.”

South Park: The Fractured But Whole, from South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone and developed by Ubisoft San Francisco, should hit PS4, Xbox One, and PC on October 17.

Luke is Games Editor at IGN's Sydney office and he's happy, because last time he had to waste hours digging through classification reports. You can sometimes find him on Twitter @MrLukeReilly.